i love you
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: Scorpius isn't sure what I love you even means, but with Albus, he doesn't even care.


Love is absolutely ridiculous, yet we humans cling to it like dewdrops to a spider web, hanging on for dear life until we have no other option left to us but to give up and fall to the ground. We humans, we silly, emotional humans, who were given weakly trembling hearts and no strength to carry them-it is us who decided to fall in love.

Growing up, I thought I knew what love was. Love was waffles in the morning and a quiet hello at the breakfast table as my mother told me to comb my hair and my father pretended to be too wrapped in his papers to notice I had even arrived. Love was my sisters bickering about who was going to sit next to Dad at dinner that night. (The answer was no one; my father rarely came home in time for dinner.)

Love, for me, meant short stories before bed time, reluctantly doled out by a greying grandmother who looked at me with poorly hidden contempt and called me _Little Him_ when she thought I was not listening. Love was the sharp words spoken to me whenever I asked a question about Grandfather, whom I had never seen in my life.

Love was never-could never be-the feeling of soft fingers stroking my hair, or gentle kisses on my cheeks. Love was not something to hold dear and cherish; it was a tool used for manipulation, only wielded to get something for myself. I had been taught that love was selfish and weak and would get me nowhere in life. And so, I had already given up on love long before _Albus._

…

At eleven years old, there were not enough words in the English language for me to be able to explain Albus. I could say _noisy_, but he was also depressingly quiet, falling into long periods of morbid self-contemplation wherein he would not say a word. I could say _boisterous_, but Albus was also lazy and slothful, leaving homework to the last minute every time. I could say _mad_, but the crazy was often well-contained beneath layers of carefully controlled sanity.

There were not enough words to truly explain Albus Potter the first time I met him, and even now, I cannot say I've quite found them all, but I can tell you one thing that is unequivocally true about him: _I would not take him any other way_. He is, and always has been, a ridiculous mix of contradictions and devil-may-cares that make him unlike any other person I have ever met.

I had only know him for a total of three days, fourteen hours, twenty-seven minutes, and a (_tick-tick-tick)_ counting ever upwards of nineteen, twenty, twenty-one seconds before I knew that I was _in love _with Albus Potter, and that I would never again want to have it any other way. If Albus felt the same way about me so quickly, I couldn't tell you; he has never informed me how long it took for him to fall in love, but I'd like to think that at least some part of him knew, even back then.

I did not say _I love you_, though, for a long list of reasons; it was, of course, much too soon into our barely beginning friendship, not to mention that we were both mere eleven year olds who still considered Stink Bombs to be an appropriate Christmas gift. Not to mention that, at the time, I knew of no way to tell that the feelings of _love_ that I had for Albus and the feelings of _love_ I had always received at home were entirely different things.

…

Our first kiss was in fifth year, hiding underneath the shade of a large birch, huddled together as we listened to a few first years skipping rocks across the lake. Albus sighed, letting his head rest upon mine, and I shifted my shoulder to accommodate his weight, wondering if there would ever be a moment more perfect than this one. With Albus tucked around me, I felt warm and happy, much more than I had been in a very long time.

We had been dating for only a few weeks at this point, and Albus was always bringing up the fact that it had been _him _to initiate our relationship, _him _to ask me out first, and _him _to be the first to use the phrase '_I love you_'. I had not been the first in anything yet, and I suppose that that fact is part of what led to me leaning over my wonderful boyfriend and kissing him deeply (gently) on the mouth.

"What was that for?" he asked, breathing heavily, when I finally pulled away, but I could see the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and I could see the way that Albus trembled, begging for a second go at me. "What's gotten into my cold little Scor today?" Albus laughed, and it was the kind of laugh you throw your whole body into, feeling the joy from your very core, spreading outwards.

"I dunno," I told him, and it was the truth. I wasn't really sure _why _I had kissed him, other than that Albus was cute and funny and was dating me. And I kissed him again and again, wondering how it was that anyone could taste as good as Albus did right there. "You're fucking ridiculous, Albus Potter."

…

"I love you, Scor," Albus said to me, but he didn't mean it anymore, or at least not in the way he had once meant it. "I love you, I love you, _please_, I love you so damn much." But all I could hear was the sound of my sisters arguing over breakfast, and all I could see was my mother scowling over our heads at Dad who was never around anymore.

Because Albus said _I love you, I love you, I love you_, but all I could see anymore was those memories of what I had once thought love was; it was all fake to me again, a shattered fantasy, a popped bubble. I loved Albus, and he said _I love you_, kissing every inch of my face and hands, but that did not make me believe him anymore.

And love is absolutely ridiculous. It is useless, for love does nothing but turn even the greatest of humans into trembling messes who don't understand the power of _love _in the same way that we do not understand why it is human nature to subject ourselves to such pain over and over again and expecting a different outcome every time.

"I _love you_, Scor," Albus said, clinging to me like a dewdrop clings to a spider web. At that moment, I did nothing to shake him off, because Albus would not stop saying _I love you_ like it would somehow fix everything. I did not let Albus fall just yet, instead choosing to endure my pain just a little longer if it meant I saw that stupid smile of his again.

…

"You're the only one left, Scor. The only one who cares anymore, the only one who truly loves me for who _I _am, rather than how others see me. I love you so fucking much, Scor, you don't even know. You don't even _know_, it's almost ridiculous how much I love you. _Fuck_, Scor, I love you so fucking much! You're the only person I need anymore, to be honest. Scor…Scor, where are you going? Why are you leaving? Scor, please…come back…I can fix this…I can make it better…no, no! Please, Scor, please, don't leave me here alone! Don't leave me, Scor! _I love you!_"

…

But _I love you_ just didn't seem to mean too much anymore to Scorpius.


End file.
